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The difference in magnetic susceptibility of graphite and diamond prompted Raman to postulate the flow of currents around the ring system of graphite in response to an applied magnetic field. The discovery of new carbon allotropes, the fullerenes, has furthered our understanding of this phenomenon and its relationship to aromatic character. C60 and the other fullerenes exhibit both diamagnetic and paramagnetic ring currents, which exert subtle effects on the magnetic properties of these molecules and provide evidence for the existence of π-electrons mobile in three dimensions.

IT has been demonstrated1–6 that solid C60 can be readily intercalated with group IA alkali metals to give metallic or insulating compounds, depending on the dopant concentration. The metal atoms diffuse into tetrahedral and octahedral interstitial sites of the C60 lattice with little disturbance to the face-centred cubic (f.c.c.) packing7. The A3C60f.c.c. phases (A is K, Rb, Cs and mixtures of these) exhibit superconductivity with a transition temperature that increases with lattice constant8. At higher dopant concentration a body-centred tetragonal A4C60 phase9 and an insulating, body-centred cubic A4C60 phase10 are found. Here we report that the divalent group IIA intercalant calcium can be intercalated into the f.c.c. sites of C60 to form a solid solution, and that, near a Ca:C60 ratio of 5:1, a phase transformation occurs to a simple cubic phase. Measurements of microwave loss, magnetic susceptibility and Meissner effect show that the simple cubic phase becomes superconducting below 8.4 K.

A WIDE variety of alkali-metal fullerides (AxC60) have been prepared, with stoichiometries varying between 1⩽=x⩽=11 (refs 1,2). Most of the compounds with x = 3 are superconductors with unusually high transition temperatures (Tc) which increase with the size of the face-centred cubic unit cell3. The increase in Tc on lattice expansion is attributed to a decrease in the conduction band width, and therefore one ultimately expects a saturation or downturn of Tc followed by a metal–insulator transition. We have sought to explore this regime by expanding the A3C60 structure through intercalation of neutral molecules capable of solvating the A+ ions. Here we report that the reaction of ammonia with Na2CsC60 (Tc = 10.5K; lattice constant α = 14.132 A) produces the compound (NH3)4Na2CsC60, which has an expanded unit cell (a = 14.473 A) and an increased Tc of 29.6 K. The structure contains the Na(NH3)+4 cation on the octahedral site.

INTERCALATING solid C60 with dopant atoms yields materials with a remarkable range of properties1. Alkali metal atoms, for example, readily form charge-transfer compounds2,3, AxC60 (where A is an alkali metal), which can be metallic, superconducting or insulating depending on the dopant concentration4–9. In all cases, the superconducting phase has a face-centred cubic (f.c.c.) structure and stoichiometry A3C60, which suggests a common mechanism for superconductivity dependent, at least in part, on the external coordination number of the C60 molecules. More recently, it has been shown10 that the alkaline earth metal calcium can also be intercalated with fulleride to form a superconducting phase, again with a f.c.c.-derived structure, near a Ca:C60 ratio of 5:1. Here we report the intercalation of fulleride with barium, in which a pure body-centred cubic phase with a lattice constant of 11.171 A is realized near a stoichiometry of Ba6C60. This phase is also superconducting (with a transition temperature of 7 K), suggesting that the mechanism of superconductivity is related to an intrinsic property of the C60 molecules, rather than the external coordination number.

SUPERCONDUCTING K3C60 (ref. 1) has been shown2 to have an intercalated face-centred cubic (f.c.c.) structure, and other A3C60 compounds (where A is K, Rb or mixtures of K, Rb and/or Cs) form an isostructural series with superconducting transition temperatures up to 31.3 K (ref. 3). Recently we reported413C NMR studies of KxC60 for x

BULK C60 (fullerite) is a solid composed of extremely hard pseudospherical molecules bonded by weak van der Waals interactions. We expect that pressurization will probe this diversity as the intermolecular distance is reduced. Here we present experimental measurements of the room-temperature pressure–volume equation of state of C60 fullerite to pressures of 20 GPa. The face-centred cubic phase remains stable under hydrostatic compression to this pressure, with an atmospheric-pressure isothermal bulk modulus of K0 = 18.1 ± 1.8 GPa and dK0/dP = 5.7 ± 0.6, characteristic of isotropic van der Waals intermolecular bonding. X-ray diffraction intensity changes are consistent with the compressibility of the C60 molecule being significantly lower than that of the bulk fullerite solid. Under non-hydrostatic compression, a transition to a crystallographic structure of lower symmetry is observed at 16±1 GPa.

THE recent syntheses1,2 of macroscopic quantities of C60 have suggested possible applications in host–guest and organic chemistry, tribology, electrochemistry and semiconductor tech-nology. Here we report the preparation of alkali-metal-doped films of C60 and C70 which have electrical conductivities at room temperature that are comparable to those attained by n-type doped polyacetylene. The highest conductivities observed in the doped films are: 4Scm−1 (Cs/C60), 100 (Rb/C60), 500 (K/C60), 20 (Na/C60), 10 (Li/C60), 2 (K/C70). The doping process is reversed on exposure of the films to the atmosphere. At high doping levels, the films become more resistive. We attribute the conductivity induced in these films to the formation of energy bands from the π orbitals of C60 or C70, which become partially filled with carriers on doping. The smaller alkali metal ions should be able to fit into the interstices in the lattice without disrupting the network of contacts between the carbon spheroids. In the case of C60, this would allow the development of an isotropic band structure, and we therefore propose that these materials may constitute the first three-dimensional 'organic' conductors.

THE synthesis of macroscopic amounts of C60 and C70 (fullerenes)1 has stimulated a variety of studies on their chemical and physical properties2,3. We recently demonstrated that C60 and C70 become conductive when doped with alkali metals4. Here we describe low-temperature studies of potassium-doped C60 both as films and bulk samples, and demonstrate that this material becomes superconducting. Superconductivity is demonstrated by microwave, resistivity and Meissner-effect measurements. Both polycrystalline powders and thin-film samples were studied. A thin film showed a resistance transition with an onset temperature of 16 K and essentially zero resistance near 5 K. Bulk samples showed a well-defined Meissner effect and magnetic-field-dependent microwave absorption beginning at 18 K. The onset of superconductivity at 18 K is the highest yet observed for a molecular superconductor.

In a recent Scientific Correspondence, Liu et al.1 reported observing carbon toroids. They suggested that these objects could be considered as quantum wires and that they would exhibit interesting transport properties. Here I provide theoretical support for this proposition.

INTERCALATION of C60 (buckminsterfullerene1,2) by alkali metals3 leads to superconducting compounds of stoichiometry A3C60 (refs 4–6) with transition temperatures Tc as high as 33 K (ref. 7). These transition temperatures are considerably higher than those for alkali-metal-intercalated graphite (

THE discovery of conductivity1 in AxC60 (where A represents an alkali metal) and superconductivity2 in KxC60 has been followed by reports of superconductivity in other alkali-metal-doped full-erides with transition temperatures as high as 33 K (ref. 3). Elucidation of phase diagrams and understanding the relationship between structure and superconducting properties is essential to a detailed understanding of superconductivity in these systems. So far, structural data have been reported only for the non-conducting, intercalated body-centred cubic (b.c.c.) structures A6C60 (where A is K or Cs; ref. 4), a body-centred tetragonal structure for A6C60 (where A is K, Rb, Cs; ref. 5) and the superconducting, intercalated face-centred cubic (f.c.c.) material K3C60 (ref. 6). Here we report the preparation of a series of single-phase, isostructural f.c.c. superconductors with composition A3C60 (where A is K, Rb, Cs or a mixture of these), and show that Tcc increases monotonically with the size of the unit cell. Extended Hiickel band-structure calcula-tions also show a monotonic increase in the density of states at the Fermi level, N(EF), with lattice parameter. The primary impli-cation of these results is that all A3C60 superconductors have the same structure and that changes in Tc can be accounted for by changes in N(EF).

THE magnetic susceptibility of C60 and the possibility of magnetic-field-induced π-electron ring currents in this carbon spheroid have been of interest since the initial experiments on carbon clusters1. If the molecule is regarded as a sphere with a radius of 3.5 A, on which 60 electrons are free to move, the Pauling ring-current model predicts a ring-current diamagnetic susceptibility 41 times the π-electron ring-current magnetic susceptibility of benzene with the field normal to the plane of the six-membered ring2,3. London theory predicts, however, that the π-electron ring currents in C60 should be weakly paramagnetic or diamagnetic, depending on the relative bond strengths used in the calculation2,3. With the availability of macroscopic quantities of C60 (ref. 4), it is now possible to study experimentally the magnetic properties of the molecule. Here we report on such measurements. We find that the diamagnetism of C60 is small, a result that we attribute to excited-state paramagnetic contributions to the π-electron ring-current magnetic susceptibility. Thus C60 seems to be an aromatic molecule with a vanishingly small π-electron ring-current magnetic susceptibility. We have performed similar measurements on C70, which indicate an appreciable π-electron diamagnetism, consistent with theoretical calculations. We attribute the differences in magnetic properties of these two molecules to their different fractions of five-membered ring structures. The fullerenes may thus constitute a class of compounds of 'ambiguous' aromatic character, traditional measures of which will not provide an adequate classification.

Nature 352, 701-703 (1991). THE positions of the alkali atoms, originally reported as (0,0.5, z) with z = 0.28, should read (x,0.5,0) with x = 0.22. These are the positions used in the calculations for Table 1 and the positions illustrated in Fig. 2.

I WISH to draw attention to the potential of odd alternant hydrocarbons (OAHs) in the design of organic metals and superconductors which gives reason to suppose that they may prove equal or even superior to present systems. There is now strong evidence for the existence of the metallic state in certain organic charge transfer salts, and a suggestion of low temperature superconducting fluctuations in the case of tetrathiofulvalene–tetracyanoquinodimethane (TTF–TCNQ); present interest is now focused on the stabilisation of these states at greater (critical) temperatures1. In contrast to the molecular crystals usually formed by conjugated organic molecules (which are held together by van der Waals' forces and characterised by a relatively weak intermolecular interaction), these salts crystallise as segregated one-dimensional stacks of cation and/or anion radicals in which the charge transfer process and thus the electronic mobility within a stack is greatly enhanced by the abnormally high overlap of the π-electron wave functions of nearest neighbours in the stack and by the ability of the constituent molecules to stabilise an ionic fluctuation.

Smalley and co-workers1 have speculated that an icosahedral C60 molecule might have unusual magnetic properties. Here we report that the π-electron ring-current susceptibility of C60 is unusually small and sensitively dependent on the relative strengths of the two inequivalent bonds of the molecule. For equal bond strengths the susceptibility is only -0.21 that of benzene (with field normal to the plane of the six-membered ring). A 2% change in relative bond strengths is enough to change the sign of the susceptibility with the result that C60 is probably weakly diamagnetic. The shielding effect of the π-electrons is calculated to be less than 1 p.p.m. for an atom placed at the centre of C60. A larger effect is expected for C606-, which is calculated to be strongly diamagnetic.